Public Scholars

2017 – 2018 Public Scholars

Keitlyn Alcantara

Food and Identity

In partnership with Casa Azafran, Keitlyn will lead a two-part workshop for middle and high school students on ancient and contemporary Latin American food practices. Participants will share the meanings of different foods in their own lives, reflect on the role of food as a source of cultural pride and a symbol of social and historical ties, and produce a video diary highlighting the valuable dietary and cultural diversity that immigrant communities bring to Nashville.Read more.

Elizabeth Lanphier

What is “Home”?

Elizabeth is exploring how the Nashville community understands the idea of home. She will record interviews with members of various Nashville-based populations, and then code and analyze these conversations to form a collaborative, community-informed concept of home. This research could then be used to inform local public policy as Nashville addresses the rapid changes our communities are undergoing (including an influx of inhabitants, rising housing prices, and the welcoming of refugee communities), and allow Nashville to contribute to national questions of displacement, immigration and hospitality. Read more.

Gabriela Leon-Perez

Mapping Immigrant Communities in Nashville

Nashville has the fastest-growing immigrant population in the United States. Nashville’s percentage of foreign-born residents rose from 2% in 2002 to 12% in 2012. Gabriela will work to create a series of digital maps illustrating the residential settlement patterns and languages spoken by the immigrant groups living in the areas served by each of the Nashville Public Library branches. These maps will help inform decisions related to collections development and library programming to ensure that the needs of the immigrant community are taken into account. Read more.

Brian McCray

A Prehistoric Sister Cities Project

Brian is working on a collaborative interpretation project that will engage students in Tennessee and Peru in creating a bilingual presentation about the archeological sites Aaittafama’ in Davidson county and Wimba in Rodriguez de Mendoza, Peru. The perspectives of schoolchildren in both the USA and Peru will emphasize the universality of certain experiences of childhood, as well as increase the appreciation for the different ways of life that existed in the past. This public archaeology project can help current inhabitants of both regions appreciate the heritage of their region by reaffirming the connections that heritage is still creating. Read more.

Leah Marion Roberts

Peer Sex Education for LGBTQI Youth

Leah will partner with the Nashville Oasis Center’s Students of Stonewall Program to design and implement a local peer sex education program centering on the LGBTQ experience. Her goal is to produce a curriculum which addresses the process of engaging youth in the development of a peer-led sex education agenda that centers their needs and experiences. Project participants will identify and create a product, such as public service messages about youth and sex education or an arts-based product such as a short film or performance about their experiences with sex education in TN.Read more.

Mariann VanDevere

Comedy Collective

Mariann is leading a year-long workshop entitled ‘The Comedy Collective’. Her goal is to provide a space where students of color can bond and destress through the creation and consumption of comedy. Read more.

Lauren Vogelstein

Embodying Math in Dance

Lauren’s project explores the potential of choreographed ensemble performances with dynamic geometric forms, such as the 2016 Rio Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, as a mode of expressive mathematical activity. Her work also studies the generative capacity of such performances in designing mathematical learning modules. Her hypothesis examines placing people within dynamic and material geometries resulting in new forms of engagement in mathematical reasoning, learning, and understanding. She will create and build large-scale props for use in ensemble constructions of three-dimensional shapes and then analyze the data collected from these interactive performances. Read more.

Danielle Wilfong

Youth & Neighborhood
Mapping

Danielle’s research investigates how neighborhood surveillance intersects with law enforcement and policing practices in specific Nashville neighborhoods, and how these interactions impact everyday routines, including getting to and from school, play, and work, thereby influencing their sense of safety and belonging. She is working with Nashville’s Oasis Center to develop and implement a mapping project that will highlight the everyday experiences of black youth in Nashville. Read more.

2016 – 2017 Public Scholars

Tristan Call

Hospitality Worker Interactive Tool

Nashville is experiencing unprecedented growth in the number of low-wage tourism and entertainment workers, who are predominantly women of color. Their low wages are in decline even as they perform some the most strenuous and physically-unhealthy jobs in the city. Tristan developed a worker-owned grassroots media infrastructure designed and managed by the low-wage workers as it seeks fair labor practices, living wages, education opportunities and humane working conditions. Read more.

Ana Christina da Silva

Diverse Community Engagement through Public Schools

Ana’s research centers on the learning ecologies of linguistically/culturally diverse students and family and diverse urban community resources available in- and out-of-school contexts.Read more.

Anna Gugenerich

Complex Societies of the Chachapoyas

Anna’s research examines complex societies of the cloud forest region of Chachapoyas (1000-1500CE), located in eastern Peru between the Andes Mountains and the Amazon Basin, using it as a vantage point from which to understand the historiography of these two broader cultural areas.Read more.

Jyoti Gupta

Creating the connected city: Engaging cultural institutions as drivers of a just Nashville

Jyoti earned a degree in public health, focusing on urbanism, the built environment and participatory methods in research and planning for healthy communities and is currently pursuing interests that intersect urbanization, democratic participation, and spatial justice.Read more.

Laura Heiber Adery

Lonliness Intervention through Music

Laura conducted an 8-week choral singing intervention for loneliness and illness related symptoms in participants with schizophrenia at the Park Center for Mental Rehabilitation. Read more.

Stacey Houston

African American Representation in Engineering Faculty Positions

Stacey worked on three NSF-funded projects designed to examine and address the factors that contribute to the underrepresentation of African-Americans in engineering faculty positions. Read more.

Leah Lomotey-Nakon

Mindfulness at Play

Leah’s project leveraged mindfulness-based play to help build sense-of-belonging as well as interpersonal, intergroup and intercultural emotional intelligence. Read more.

Rachel McKane

US Water Management & Conservation Policy

Rachel has conducted research that examines the hydrological, political, and social dimensions of water management and conservation policy in US metropolitan areas. Read more.

Chelsea Peters

Doctoral Student, Department of Environmental Engineering

Chelsea’s project includes the writing, illustration, publishing, and distribution of a place-based children’s book for the villages she works with in Southwestern Bangladesh. Read more.

Megan Wongkamalasai

Doctoral Student, Department of Learning, Teaching, and Diversity

Megan taught kindergarten and second grade at a local elementary school serving primarily immigrant and refugee families. Since her return to Vanderbilt years ago, she has worked on the DKR-12 project, “Understanding Space through Engineering Design.” Read more.